


Ennon Wiks, Course 2B-H-ARC "Human Architecture 2100-Present: Change and Discovery", Opening Address

by Altonym



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-21 01:54:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1533374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altonym/pseuds/Altonym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Published on the official extranet channel of the University of Kodash. 241 hits, a record breaker for the institution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ennon Wiks, Course 2B-H-ARC "Human Architecture 2100-Present: Change and Discovery", Opening Address

Before the Reaper War, humanity was - with the possible exception of the Krogan - the most highly individualistic sapient spacefaring species in the galaxy, and this is reflected in pre-war human living quarters. Outside of the military, human accommodation broadly shows a preference for lone sleeping and bathing arrangements, in sharp contrast with the turians (who use civilian quasi-dormitories) and the asari (who bathe communally). It is worth mentioning that this was not always so - many Earth cultures traditionally practiced these communal behaviours - but we concern ourselves with the face the humans chose to present to the galaxy in their thirty years of spacefaring before the return of the Reapers.

Human colonies demonstrated their love of individualism in design very quickly, often sacrificing efficiency of resource use in order to provide colonists with private quarters. Like the Krogan, many humans report a strong desire for space which is unquestionably theirs, completely barred from access to other members of the household. This trait can persist even within family groups, to the consternation of more communally-minded species who attempt relationships with humans. Such concerns are frequently found on asari-human dating sites, in plaintive and drawn out forum threads; humans are cagey, closed off and suspicious, say the asari, while humans complain that asari are smothering busybodies with no sense of personal space.

So as the individual is separated from the family for humans, so too is the family separate from the society, and the society separate from the species. Again like the Krogan, also like the Drell, humans were splintered into thousands of ethnic and cultural groups prior to spaceflight, and had a developed concept of "nationhood" that we will explore in more detail later in the course. The affinity between humanity and the krogan has been attributed in large part to this shared fractiousness (for those interested, _The Genophage Accord_ by Matriarch Eristhee provides a detailed analysis of this now traditional alliance). These species can be contrasted with the asari, whose exogamy makes cultural identifiers relatively fluid, the turians, who began identifying themselves primarily on a species level long before they achieved spaceflight, and the volus, whose political and cultural titles are a commodity to be readily traded.

The idea of family being separate from wider community keenly impacts pre-war human design; again, where turians eat in canteens and asari dine in large groups of multiple families, humans have tended to atomise, at least post-industrialisation (for earlier examples of human communality, please see _Communal Dining Habits Of Pre-Industrial Species_ , by Urdnot Oranka). Though several human societies have been structured in active defiance of this tendency to individualism (the self-sustaining agrarian commune network on Mindoir being the most obvious current example), again we speak in generalities.

Human social mores have been influenced by this individualism; more than any species except possibly ourselves, humans do not readily divulge information about their families. While for us this represents a shrewd calculation of social capital, such is not the case for humanity; in fact in the post-spaceflight era, bartering over reproduction is for humans highly taboo. Many turian spouses of humans report frustration over the human reticence to divulge family history; in the turian meritocracy, a grandfather's sins do not taint the image of his grandson, and so there is no reason to hide them. Humans do not agree.

What, then, does all this mean for human living before the Reaper War? It equals a construction style of many sub-divided units within larger blocks, whether that be individual apartments in large buildings, or houses within neighbourhoods, districts, cities and so on. Each family receives their own, completely independent space, with communal courtyards and the like reserved only for the most public, state-owned spaces. Property rights were extremely rigidly developed on Earth before spaceflight even began; indeed, even _volus_ contract lawyers learned rather a lot from the multinationals, later multiplanetaries, of Earth.

Each adult in an ideal human home has their own designated space - this may be a room, for those who are not related, or a bed for those who are. Even in ostensibly public spaces, humans are notable for forming extreme attachments to specific areas, developing a sense of vague ownership over chairs or positions-at-table which do not formally belong to them. This is seen by both turians and asari as greedy and bizarre.

What happens, then, after a cataclysm? The Reaper War's influence on these human paradigms of design and living, particularly on Earth, cannot be overstated. With the destruction of most of Earth's infrastructure and the coalescence of the remaining human population under the martial law of the Alliance, a fundamental shift in outlook occurred amongst the survivors. Like the turians, immediate post-war humanity observed a striking discipline, swiftly forming tight-knit, relatively small communities with clear chains of command. Though the Alliance jurisdiction lasted less than twenty years, it had a clear effect on postwar human society.

Fundamentally, the core human ideal - privacy, and individual existence separate from the family - is retained. Human postwar homes are still units of living, sacrosanct and culturally inviolable. But the unit within which the family dwells is completely changed. Now, houses are being built around communal courtyards, often spaces towards which the residents are duty-bound to contribute (either with money or time). For more information on human victory squares, _The Gardens of New Earth_ by Corazon Williams-Santiago is an excellent source.

This communality of construction reflects a fundamental alteration of human society, and a social unification that is utterly unprecedented. Pre-war human society was built fundamentally on exploitation - though the humans had no formal species-wide caste system like the batarians, and though slavery was nominally outlawed on Earth, human capitalism was unusually brutal, and humanity had one of the greatest income disparities of any council species (behind only the volus). In addition, human history of the five hundred years before the achievement of spaceflight is based around centres of wealth and power which subjugated others violently, first through force and later through economic domination and discrimination via various cultural and pseudoscientific markers. The ramifications of this were still being felt by the late 2100s.

During the invasion, the Reapers targeted the centres of human wealth, the nerve centres from which the powerful acted - the same places that had historically subjugated the rest of Earth's population. While the off-world power base of the Alliance was Arcturus Station, on Earth power lay in cities like London, New York, Tokyo, Vancouver, Beijing. All were near-obliterated.

At the same time, atmospheric scrubbers shot into near-orbit to help mitigate the runaway pollution of Earth's atmosphere in the previous three centuries continued to function. The factories no longer existed, but the scrubbers did - they began to repair Earth's atmosphere. This brought about a sharp and sudden worldwide cooling, it brought unpredictable and wintry weather to vast areas of the Earth, it brought storms. The traditional centres of power were winter-pummelled and almost unsalvageable - and so the Systems Alliance moved its groundside capital.

In the end, Lagos, shown on screen, was chosen - it was out of the way of the dangerous weather events, it had continuous power via longcable from Saharan solar fields (making it the only major Earth city left without constant brownouts), and it had retained enough of an infrastructure to act as a nerve centre for distribution. The symbolism of placing the new central coordinating authority of humanity in the geographical heart of a hundreds-year-old system of exploitation did not go unnoticed.

The political movement that developed after the Reaper War was one that had cooperation with alien species and human unification at its heart. A globalisation that had been fundamentally erosive and destructive, both environmentally and socially, would now become a globalisation of mutual exchange, of genuine cooperation. Perhaps the simplest summary came from the voice of that era, the Shepard whose wounds reflected humanity's - "There has been enough death."

The Reconstruction movement shifted Earth's politics resoundingly towards support of social welfare, state-organised resources and conservation of an environment badly damaged by industrial runoff and nuclear fallout. When the Alliance ended martial law, a grand coalition of the socialist PPE, the Greens, and the unionist/pro-council IWP took control of the Alliance civilian government - theirs has been the dominant political frame of the last century. Public and private construction projects reflect this.

The buildings that we see on postwar Earth huddle together around shared spaces, around parks and public places. This Restoration architecture employs smooth lines, is generally simple and unadorned, but it is perhaps most of all regional, historical. In the damp temperate zones of Earth, genetically modified thatch fibres attempt to echo the ancient buildings of that area. In the hottest areas of the planet, traditional baked brick is as effective at shaking off the heat as solar-powered air conditioning. In areas prone to flooding, humans begin to reclaim old techniques of stilt-building, fusing our marsh construction techniques used originally on Sur'Kesh with theirs.

There is no one defining image of Restoration architecture - it is reflective of a human cultural rebirth after coming so close to death. As humans reclaim architecture, they also reclaim old patterns of living - the surviving population disperses, and a dominant model emerges of market towns surrounded by a patchwork of villages, connected by skyway. The Enclaves, the habitable zones of Earth officially incorporated by the postwar government of Earth before EY2220, now have some of the highest living standards of anywhere in the galaxy, rivalling even the rivieras of Thessia.

Post-war human society is consumed in debate over the individual and the social. The historical human nation exists less as a political reality than as a cultural identity, and the young, born to a postwar world with a united Earth government, increasingly view it as irrelevant. Commander Shepard's lifetime - EY2145-EY2230 - encompasses a fundamental transformation of human society, from an empty galaxy to a many-peopled one, from earth to sky and back to earth again. Those born now find themselves clashing with those who were born in an entirely different galaxy. The debate is expressed in political theatre, in art and in debate, but it is also expressed in the structures of a people, in the modes of living - and it is that upon which our course is based.


End file.
